Tuesday, June 7, 2016

KEMO FOR EMO - Punk Rock that Burns a Memory in your Mind

INTERVIEW WITH SINGER/GUITARIST LARRYYour band has been
around since 2003. What have the past 13 years been like for you? What are some
of the most memorable moments?

A lot has happened since 2003 and most of our stories are
best kept for drunken nights. We have experience getting signed at a
young age, putting out a full length, almost getting signed with Columbia
records, bailing members out of jail in New Orleans, Hard Rock Café
performance, played with Dynamite Boy, The Queers, Fenix TX, Unwritten Law,
NOFX, released a series of music videos, split up, got back together, made an
appearance in the Pop-Punk edition of Alternative Press, played as The Ramones
with an actual Ramone in the audience, met a ton of great local acts over the
years and watched the Houston Punk Rock scene blossom back into something that
holds some weight.

You have a catchy
band name. Is there an interesting story behind it?

The story behind the name has many different origins but
basically it comes down to one thing; the truth. Back in the early 2000’s
we were a bunch of punk rock kids who wanted to make fun of the new rise of emo
kids. We were going to start a comedy band and write ultra-sappy sad
songs. As time went on we starting clicking and gaining momentum bringing
in our actual love of pop-punk music. We started writing the songs we
wanted to write. A few years went by, we got signed, put out an EP, a
full length, and gained a following. By that point the name was not going
anywhere. Somewhere along the way we had someone at a venue ask us if it
meant, “medicine for emotion”. That stuck with us and we often use that
as a short explanation.

The band has a nice
clean sound, definitely a pop punk influence. When starting the group, was the
initial goal to create a pop punk sound? The reason I ask is because many times
when a band starts out, their music tends to sound nothing like the original
idea.

Besides writing sappy mock emo songs for a short time,
Pop-punk was always the obvious influence as we grew up in the Houston scene listening to River Fenix, Dig
Dug, 30 Foot Fall, and Dynamite Boy. We wanted to join the ranks and
share the stage with our heroes and make a name for ourselves. Also
national acts like Green Day, MxPx, Local H, and The Offspring were in every CD
binder we had so Pop-Punk was going to rear its melodic head.

I really like your
videos. Can you go through the process of how you create a concept, film and
edit your videos? What kind of camera and video editing program do you use?

First off, thank you very much! As far as music videos
go, it really started off with the album concept. The album was written
based on real life events and were written in sequential order based on the way
a certain personal tragedy played out. As any Hollywood
adaptation goes, we wanted to throw away the literal version of the story for
the “movie” and make something that would play out better theatrically.
The characters of John and Camille were thought up and over several months the
story came to life. All 4 parts of the story were realized before we shot
the first frame. We knew exactly where this story was going to begin and
end. This was always meant to be a short film. That is why we were
able to use the actress that is in the video on the cover of the album and on
our merchandise. The entire album and video series needed to be
completely cohesive.

The first video for The Cause / The Straightline was shot
with a single camera, a Canon 6D using only a handheld stabilizer (Flycam 3000)
and a Jib. It was shot 10 seconds at a time as we shot in raw format and
took roughly 8 days to shoot. Everything is edited using Adobe Premiere
and I color grade using DaVinci Resolve Pro.

We have finished principal photography on Chapter 3: No Tell
and are currently wrapping up post production. We hope to have it
released within the next 4 weeks. No Tell was shot using two different
cameras. The first was a Black Magic Cinema Production 4K camera with an
EF mount. We switched between 50mm lenses and 24-70. The second
camera used was a Black Magic pocket cinema camera. This is a micro four
thirds camera. We used a metabones adapter to mount a 12-35mm lens for
most of the shots, then an EF adapter for a 50mm Canon lens for hand held
shots. A Ronin gimbal was used for almost everything, although a Jib was
used for a few of the wider band performance shots.

LLet’s talk about your
discography starting with your current release A Picture Perfect Romance. How
does it differ from your other releases?

A Picture Perfect Romance is an extremely personal
record. So personal that we recorded it 3 separate times to get it
right. From the lyrical content to the order of the tracks to the tone of
the guitars, right down to the order of the kick drum hits, they were all
calculated to make sure the tone and the mood of the songs were conveyed
exactly the way we wanted them to be. This album has literal blood,
sweat, tears, fear, heartache, and miles and miles of living on it. If
everyone could see what life dealt out for these songs to be written, it would
hit much harder in the chest. That’s why we felt a theatrical storyline
would help convey a love/loss scenario where the listener would allow the songs
to sink in on a deeper level.

Is A Picture Perfect
Romance a concept album? If so, can you give more details about it? It is
autobiographical?

APPR is a concept album based on reality, written from a
personal place but delivered to the world disguised as a story about fictional
characters.

The lyrics, if you really listen beginning to end through
the whole album will really explain what the album was written about.
Love, drugs, loss, fear, anxiety, promises. Everything brutal that
someone can go through, but not everyone comes out of. We came out on top
this time and this album is a way of, “shedding” these experiences.
Recording the accomplishments and the achievements of facing your demons head
on and winning. This was relinquishing it’s power and putting it out to
the world in hopes that we will never have to relive it again but knowing we
are that much stronger for making it through.

It seems like things
are going really well with the band’s popularity? Your thoughts?

As you stated before, we have been at this since 2003 and
this time around we are working our butts off. This is no longer a few
kids hoping for a record deal. This is a group of men with a proactive
approach to everything and we are working 24/7 to make this our legacy.
Everything we do, we try to it as big and as best as we can. Whether it
be a cover show, or opening for NOFX, or making a music video. Whatever we
put our name on we try to make it something outstanding. This is our
passion and we put our all into it and we hope that everyone who listens, and
watches can enjoy it as much as we do. We would love to do this and only
this for the rest of our lives and we are very blessed to be doing as well as
we are. We would love to get that call from Fat Wreck Chords, but right
now the future looks very bright.

Let’s finish off by
giving some details of what we can expect next from you guys.

We have Chapter 3: No Tell music video coming out within the
next few weeks, then we will start principal photography on the final music
video of the series. We have a show at Warehouse live on June 11th
supporting our good friends Soapbox Revolution for their upcoming CD
Release. In July we will embark on a Texas tour with our friends Four Letter
Language and PRP.